Clark Hall, University of Virginia, 2009

Thoughts on composition appreciated. Thanks, particularly with regard

to the inclusion of the blue and white patch of sky in the upper right.

I find the logo more distracting than than the patch of sky.

I'm sure it is, and please pardon me for including it. If you are able, use your mental powers to ignore it, exercising something like selective hearing, a technique used by teenagers and younger children across the globe to not hear their parents.

An inadvertant exposure?

:-) very funny, Robert. I like it.

 

No, it was a very careful exposure, actually. You don't like it?

It's so refreshing to have someone actually ask a directed question along with a request for critique. My feeling on the sky is that it would work better for me if there was a bit more of it. As it stands, there's just enough to be noticeable but not quite enough for it really to perform. Obviously, the perspective is one of the main players here, looking up at the column. So I think including a bit more sky would emphasize that perspective and also provide more of a sense of depth. That sky has a lot of room to increase the overall depth of the shot, but needs a little more presence to accomplish that. Also, if there were a little more sky, I hope it would be the blue part, because I like the way the light blue works with the pastel pink of the architecture. It's a nice color scheme and more blue would highlight that. That being said, you did the same on the other side with just a wee bit of the column, so there is some continuity with those two elements being so "slim." Do you have the same question about the bit of column up on the left? Had you thought about including more of that?

Thanks Fred.

 

Good points, particularly about the bit of column on the left which, now that you mention it, I don't like anymore.

 

I found it difficult to include everything I wanted: the light, which was the series theme, and the column (but not too much column, and not too many columns) so as to be recognized specifically.

 

The series was created as part of a contest: I shot and printed the pictures, mailed them as postcards to a group of people familiar with the area, who had to guess the location. The light fixture therefore was a clue, the column(s) a clue, and possibly the cornice a third clue. I struggled with keeping the sky in the composition at all because of its brightness, and because of its spaciousness (the eye would go up, up and away from the picture). Other considerations were maintaining the diagonals and the horizontal 4x6 aspect ratio, not letting the light fixture get too far away from the column, and keeping the dead space below the light to a minimum. Using this frame, which is close to 100% of the original capture, cropping defeated one or more of those requirements.

 

That was in February, though, and now I'm looking at it again, along with the outtakes, and considering your thoughts. I see that I made a composition that might work a little better and can't think of any good reason why I didn't use that frame in the first place, instead of this one.

 

 

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